Topher Grace Interview

Topher Grace: "I'm Not Looking To Get Married"

Quick Bio

Topher Grace is best known for his role in That '70s Show, in which he played the level-headed Wisconsinite and token nice guy, Eric Forman. But the young actor has demonstrated more potential with roles that run the gamut, from an alien symbiotic hybrid in Spider-Man 3 to a drug-using prep-school student in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Now Grace can add writer and producer to his resume with his upcoming film, Take Me Home Tonight.

In Take Me Home Tonight, Grace plays a recent college graduate struggling to figure out what to with his life. The film comes out today.

In Take Me Home Tonight, you play a character that lies about his job and his status to get close to a woman he loves. Have you ever had to resort to anything like that?

Topher Grace: There are two answers to that question. First of all, guys are always lying to impress a girl. We’re always selling ourselves and trying to put that best foot forward. But I’ve never really lied to a woman like my character does -- maybe because it was impossible. By the time I was seriously dating anyone, I was already on TV and couldn’t lie. I had the opposite problem in a way -- and I know it’s a high-class problem. I started on That ‘70s Show when I was 19, so I would always look at guys like my character in Take Me Home Tonight -- guys just coming out of college who didn’t know what they wanted to do. I wondered what that kind of freedom was like.

Did your success at an early age exclude some women from your life and mean some were attracted to you just because you were famous?

TG: It did, but I think I have that sense that we all have -- regardless of whether you’re in the public eye -- of when someone is real and when someone is sucking up to you. You can tell when someone is just trying to use you. It becomes just someone who’s hanging around. Whenever someone sucks up to me, it never goes anywhere because I’m too boring a guy.

The new film is set in the late 1980s. But you were too young to be dating in the "Me Generation" era. How did you get yourself into character for the decade of Reagan?

TG: I think we all looked to other young-adults-coming-of-age movies to see how they handled looking backward. Too many movies mock the ‘80s and end up looking like 21st-century movies that mocked the ‘80s and how we think people acted with each other. But if you look at classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie made in the ‘80s but set in the ‘70s, or American Graffiti , which was made in the ‘70s but set in the ‘60s, they treated life and people in love genuinely, and it shows.

You can play younger than your actual age. While your characters look for young love, are you looking to settle down?

TG: I’m not looking to get married and start a family yet. In fact, I finished a movie recently with Richard Gere in which I play an FBI agent with a family. We had to do a family portrait for the film with two kids, and trying to keep all of that in control was terrifying.